Fewer hippos, more lab coats

10–12th May 2017 at thestudio

A 45 minute Experience Report by:

Peter Appleby

Auto Trader

Catherine Leigh

Auto Trader

About this Experience Report

In the business context, ‘HIPPO’ is actually a cheeky reference to 'highest paid person's opinion'; it's very easy for teams to end up working on stuff because someone said so, not because it's the right thing to do.

Come along to our experience report and meet our data scientists. We will begin with an introduction to hypothesis testing, how it's helping shape our product discovery, and what we have learned so far. You'll leave with new thinking on how to tackle your next project.

Software delivery has come a long way. At Auto Trader, we have moved from waterfall, to agile software teams in a waterfall business, to a more lean and agile squad-based structure across all our departments. Despite this, too much of what we do is still opinion-led over data-led. We started on a software revolution, to introduce a more scientific, hypothesis-led approach in January 2016. Come and find out more about how we are getting on and how we've been finessing our approach.

About the Speakers

Peter Appleby

Peter joined Auto Trader in 2015 as a data scientist, having spent 12 years in academic and industrial research roles in both Germany and the UK. He provides scientific and technical expertise on a wide range of projects and also co-ordinates Auto Trader’s data science training programme, which covers all aspects of data science from machine learning to statistics and hypothesis testing. He is passionate about sharing his approach to problem solving and promoting scientific rigour in data science.

Catherine Leigh

Catherine is a business analyst at Auto Trader, where she has been turning data into insight for the last 2 years. She uses data science techniques to support business objectives, as opposed to determining them. Catherine hopes that these smaller applications of statistics will lead to better uptake and understanding of data science across the whole business.